Slashdot Mirror

check out the Rosen Powertrain, a series electric motor/gas turbine (very nice) and flywheel which has been tested and runs beautifully in a reworked saturn.

the secret is, the flywheel is suppoted on gimbals, which allow it to rotate in 3 dimensions, so it causes no precession relative to the vehicle.

plus, its made of carbon fibre, and is made such that if the flywheel does break, the rotor dissolves rather than flies apart.

---

Oddly, I don't believe there is a "real" energy crisis (certainly not with petrolium). And if there is, how on earth will shipping oil from a wildlife refuge in the extream reaches of Alaska predominantly to Japan solve our shortages? Maybe I'm not sofistikated enough to understand our President's foreward thinking energy policy, or maybe I was just dazzled by the pretty pictures.

On a totally unrelated note, would you pay a buck to reduce your risk of cancer 1%. President Bush, and Christine Todd Whitman think you may not be worth it. So they'll study arsenic concentrations and its effects at its 1942 level while the rest of the reasonable world moves to a standard 5 times more stringent. more here

But really. Who did people think they were voting for? I know people who voted for Bush, and worse yet I know people who couldn't be convinced to vote at all.

I actually OWN an authenticated copy of The Space Shuttle Operator's Manual, complete with archetypical mission overviews and step-by-step procedures, published 1988. It's really interesting, for anyone who has operated research or industrial equipment.
Anyways, the ultimate re-usable vehicle would be a built-in-space extended-lifetime solar transit vehicle, a.k.a. starship. It won't depart from or re-enter the atmosphere, so all the aerodynamic and weight-stress problems can be ditched. Its size and mass can be expanded proportionately to the thrust of its powerplant (Scientific American has a marvelous article about Nuclear Propulsion in Space . Finally, such a spacecraft could concieveably carry its own hydroponics, waste recyclers, and recreational facilities, in addition to mission-oriented facilities, to support a 14- to 30-person team.
Gentlemen, we can build it. We have the technology.

Nuclear war is only less dangerous if you think of it as 1 bomb taking out a town as opposed to the reality of the situation: 1 Sub in our ballistic missle fleet has over 200 independant warheads. (aren't MIRV's a bitch ?). How many subs do we have ? How many silos do we have ? How many things do we have that the public doesn't even know about ?

According to this article in Scientific American Magazine, "In sum, the two nuclear superpowers remain ready to fire a total of more than 5,000 nuclear weapons at each other within half an hour." The other numbers in the article add up to somewhat more than this though.

Btw, you can find a nice abandoned missle silo tour at this site.

Acutally, if the attack mechanism is something thats "alive" or acts alive, then it can be killed or thwarted (eventually, and with enough research). While 95% of earths population might rot and spontaneously explode, there'd probably be enough people randomly unaffected to survive and figure out a "cure" or an antigen.

Perhaps, perhaps not. Some natural diseases like rabies kill higher percentages of some species infected. But if something kills even much less than 95% of humans at random, there would likely be a total collapse of civilization. Too many essential services and technologies would be lost. Not only the GM weapon, but natural diseases would become deadly as medicine regressed, aided by famine and civil violence.

On the other hand, short of a metric assload of lead sheilding, theres nothing you can do about a neutron bomb. You're just fucked if you happen to be nearby.

True. But enhanced neutron radiation weapons only kill over a small area. Inverse-square law assures isn't enough neutron flux at greater distances.

A fun excercize if we were allowed to know the numbers involved would be "how many nukes do we have per square mile of 1% or lower survivability fallout levels".

Good question. Probably an order of magnitude or two more than the number that exists. The Chernobyl explosion released an immensely larger amount than would be formed by a missle-mountable nuclear weapon, and few larger bombs exist. Cancer would be more common, but again most deaths would be caused by natural disease and other factors related to anarchy.

Nuclear war is only less dangerous if you think of it as 1 bomb taking out a town as opposed to the reality of the situation: 1 Sub in our ballistic missle fleet has over 200 independant warheads. (aren't MIRV's a bitch ?). How many subs do we have ? How many silos do we have ? How many things do we have that the public doesn't even know about ?

According to this article in Scientific American Magazine, "In sum, the two nuclear superpowers remain ready to fire a total of more than 5,000 nuclear weapons at each other within half an hour." The other numbers in the article add up to somewhat more than this though.

Btw, you can find a nice abandoned missle silo tour at this site.

Acutally, if the attack mechanism is something thats "alive" or acts alive, then it can be killed or thwarted (eventually, and with enough research). While 95% of earths population might rot and spontaneously explode, there'd probably be enough people randomly unaffected to survive and figure out a "cure" or an antigen.

Perhaps, perhaps not. Some natural diseases like rabies kill higher percentages of some species infected. But if something kills even much less than 95% of humans at random, there would likely be a total collapse of civilization. Too many essential services and technologies would be lost. Not only the GM weapon, but natural diseases would become deadly as medicine regressed, aided by famine and civil violence.

On the other hand, short of a metric assload of lead sheilding, theres nothing you can do about a neutron bomb. You're just fucked if you happen to be nearby.

True. But enhanced neutron radiation weapons only kill over a small area. Inverse-square law assures isn't enough neutron flux at greater distances.

A fun excercize if we were allowed to know the numbers involved would be "how many nukes do we have per square mile of 1% or lower survivability fallout levels".

Good question. Probably an order of magnitude or two more than the number that exists. The Chernobyl explosion released an immensely larger amount than would be formed by a missle-mountable nuclear weapon, and few larger bombs exist. Cancer would be more common, but again most deaths would be caused by natural disease and other factors related to anarchy.

Most of our enemies would see it most efficient to use prions.

These are what scientists think are responsible for mad cow disease, as well as the Kuru disease from Africa. Supposedly, if used as a biological weapon (which is years away, if even possible), they could be targetted toward specific ethnic groups and people with certain attributes. (Yes, each word in the above is a link to a resource.)

Most of our enemies would see it most efficient to use prions.

These are what scientists think are responsible for mad cow disease, as well as the Kuru disease from Africa. Supposedly, if used as a biological weapon (which is years away, if even possible), they could be targetted toward specific ethnic groups and people with certain attributes. (Yes, each word in the above is a link to a resource.)

Dang, no broadband!

Of course, you do need to bring 18 months of consumables with you to get to mars in the first place + time to see if you can even get what you need there to survive. We reached the moon by the skin of our teeth. It cost us a large percentage of the GDP for ten years to get there; it was too expensive. There was no reason for it, then.

As you said, there's "nothing interesting to anybody except geologists". Well, that is why we would go back. Minerals.

The most abundant element is oxygen, accounting for about 58% of the atoms present. Most of the oxygen is chemically united with silicon, next most abundant, and accounting for about 20% of the atoms. Also abundant are aluminum, calcium, iron, magnesium, titanium rich compounds and other elements that are abundant in the earth's crust.

Exploration of the Universe, George O. Abell

The moons gravity is only 0.165 that of the earth. Getting things into orbit there would be very cheap. A mass driver would do it pretty well.

Supporting life on the moon is a pain in the ass. No air, no water,

Actually, you're wrong. Water was found on the moon on March 5, 1998. Where the hell were you? Also here and here.

Get yer facts straight, big guy.

This JPL page on Lunar In-Situ resource utilization seems to be the best of the lot.

-tarkas

Dang, no broadband!

Of course, you do need to bring 18 months of consumables with you to get to mars in the first place + time to see if you can even get what you need there to survive. We reached the moon by the skin of our teeth. It cost us a large percentage of the GDP for ten years to get there; it was too expensive. There was no reason for it, then.

As you said, there's "nothing interesting to anybody except geologists". Well, that is why we would go back. Minerals.

The most abundant element is oxygen, accounting for about 58% of the atoms present. Most of the oxygen is chemically united with silicon, next most abundant, and accounting for about 20% of the atoms. Also abundant are aluminum, calcium, iron, magnesium, titanium rich compounds and other elements that are abundant in the earth's crust.

Exploration of the Universe, George O. Abell

The moons gravity is only 0.165 that of the earth. Getting things into orbit there would be very cheap. A mass driver would do it pretty well.

Supporting life on the moon is a pain in the ass. No air, no water,

Actually, you're wrong. Water was found on the moon on March 5, 1998. Where the hell were you? Also here and here.

Get yer facts straight, big guy.

This JPL page on Lunar In-Situ resource utilization seems to be the best of the lot.

-tarkas

ok, besides the obvious fact that this post insults most people's intelligence, i'm gonna reply to it (sorry ... end flame~) the reason that mars is the logical point to begin manned exploration of the solar system is that it is the closest planet to our own with a optimum travel time of 280-ish days. also, the distance from the sun is greater. this means that astronauts won't melt their undies while they're their working (ie. adequate operational temperatures). awhile ago i recall seeing a article in SciAm that had to do with what it would take to terraform mars, and the time scale was approx 100 years(basically mars + atmosphere of greenhouse gases in correct proportions = livable environment assuming water is lying around somewhere (ie. polar ice caps)) if we were to take an agressive approach to the terraform. if we were to attempt such a thing on venus which has a radical atomosphere compared to our planet we would have problems because not only would we have to pump new gases into the atmousphere, but we would also have to pull quite a bit out (toxic fumes = bad). micro-organisms can deal with the atmousphere near the ground (forget what that layer is called) but not at greater height). on top of that is the previously mentioned problem with introducing foreign bacteria to a planet - its opens the doors for bad things to happen (ie. mutations - noone will want to go their if the environment induces a mutation resulting in a trait making a bacteria which cannot be controled by traditional methods (antibiotics) and are potentially harmful (ok, look down. see that atheletes foot? now think if your entire body was being attacked by something similar that we had no way of killing)). anyway what i'm trying to say is that our timeframe for terraforming venus would be much greater than 100 years, and would requre X billion dollars of investment and technologies which we don't have. another reason for going to mars is that it is synonomous (spelling? help!) with extra-planetory exploration. we've been saying we would go there ever since 1969 when man had conquered the moon. the only difference is back then we said we would have moonbases in a few decades and it would be easy to bunnyhop off them to mars, etc. hm ... i know i was going to say something else too. oh well, its gone

There's a good article in April's Scientific American on Lanier's new work on virtual presence using Internet2. It's been renamed "tele-immersion", apparently. It's a good way to soak up all that extra bandwidth.

They use a principle known as supercavitation and rockets.

From this month's Scientific American

Of late, it has become increasingly apparent that the world's major naval powers are developing the means to build entire arsenals of innovative underwater weapons and armadas of undersea watercraft able to operate at unprecedented speeds. This high-velocity capability - a kind of "warp drive" for water - is based on the physical phenomenon of supercavitation. This fluid-mechanical effect occurs when bubbles of water vapor form in the lee of bodies submerged in fast-moving water flows. The trick is to surround an object or vessel with a renewable envelope of gas so that the liquid wets very little of the body's surface, thereby drastically reducing the viscous drag. Supercavitating systems could mean a quantum leap in naval warfare that is analogous in some ways to the move from prop planes to jets or even to rockets and missiles.

So much for the "silent service".

- tarkas

Ah yes, Jeremy Rifkin, "The most hated man in science.".

• Petabit communication pipes and perhaps thousands of high-definition cameras will enable someone to manipulate a "soft camera" that will elicit a view from thousands of angles throughout a stadium dome or from down on the field.
  "This will let you watch the Super Bowl from the vantage point of the quarterback"...
• Forget helmets and data gloves. Nanobots, robots the size of a molecule, will travel through the bloodstream of your brain beaming messages to neurons that will enable the simulation of sight, sound, smell and hearing as well as emotion and sexual sensations. You'll also be able to travel to St. Barth's, attend every game of the World Series or engage Al Gore in a debate.
• Virtual immortality will come if the petabyte storage capability provides a "rapid simulated learning environment" that infuses your biological clone with the totality of your experiences. Maybe mind is portable after all.

You can read more about the different optical switching technology in the January 2001 issue of Scientific American. Their special report, "The rise of optical switching" explains the various technologies used to switch photonic circuits.

Unfortunately, the article is not available on-line, though you can see a related article about the rise of optical networking. You can see the article abstracts at SciAm.Com.

The switching technology for Lynx's switch sounds like thermo-optic switches. If so, it uses light interference to pass/block signals. The technology is wavelength sensitive, unlike MEMS or bubble switches. Also, liquid-crystal switching (another popular photonic switch technology) is polarization sensitive.

I too started noticing SciAm getting all "wired" on us about 3 years ago and have since watched it get progressively worse. It's really a shame.

SciAm used to be a refuge for what I had assumed to be the huge demographic of highly scientifically literate geeks who do NOT have doctorates in particle physics (IE. people like me). But, with reporting like this, that's just plain stinking with blatant scientific inaccuracies, it's too late it seems. You've gone the way of Discover and New Scientist, never to return to the pinnacle of respectable scientific journalism you once defined.

Time to let my subscription run out and get some Nature or Science in it's place.

Scientific American discussed this last October.

The Third-Generation Partnership Project is the group developing the standard.

According to the people they don't let out too often, a water hit is worse than a land hit as well.

There is a Scientific American article about the relative damage wrought by land and sea asteroid impacts.

As for the 26 million year period itself, Scientific American offers some information.

intersting stuff!

Chris Cothrun
Curator of Chaos

According to the article, this technology's intimate relationship with Internet2 comes mostly from the fact that there were very few applications around which NEEDED Internet2's impressive network stats to actually run. Consequently, the peeps at I2 contacted Jaron to lead up the project. And ... well, you can read about it here.

Additionally there's some other teleimmersion sites at UNC and at Jaron's research site.

According to the article, this technology's intimate relationship with Internet2 comes mostly from the fact that there were very few applications around which NEEDED Internet2's impressive network stats to actually run. Consequently, the peeps at I2 contacted Jaron to lead up the project. And ... well, you can read about it here.

Additionally there's some other teleimmersion sites at UNC and at Jaron's research site.

Check this month's Scientific American for more information on the technology involved, or read here. There's also some links from the article to various sites relating to telepresence. Enjoy!
---
www.stallman.org is running Apache/1.3.6 (Unix) on FreeBSD

Cheers, quokka

there's an interesting article in this month's Scientific American, (sorry, they don't have the whole article available online) about how people who are extreme narcissists not only have unduly inflated self-esteem, but are more likely than the average Jane to lash out, physically and emotionally, at others when someone points out one of their flaws.

The authors almost go so far as to suggest that one of their test subjects is a psycopath.

Participated in any research studies lately?

Here is an article from Scientific American giving a good overview of the basics of quantum computing.

It's a bit dated (from 1998) but the principles are the same.

Anyone care to reply with links to basic quantum computing information you care to share?

A great Scientific American article on the subject ("Quantum Computing with Molecules") can be found at http://www.sciam.com/1998/0698issue/0698gershenfel d.html.

I can see setting my PDA down only to watch it get picked up by the wind and blown away. Of course more power is always nice, but at what point would it be cheaper/easier to just start stuffing multiple cpu's in a case and Multi-thread stuff? you gotta figure that this new technology is expensive and at some point having 10 2Ghz chips in a box might be more effective then buying a machine with one 20Ghz chip.
what's it all for?
see the article in the same issue on tele-immersion where a 3d world is created on each end for virtual meetings. It's great stuff but it takes racks of computers on each end to get about 2-3 frames per second. I guess we really do need faster computers yet....

• Culture clashes between sub groups in the industry (Mac vs PC, vi vs emacs, MS vs Linux) and the characteristics of the individual subgroups
• Culture Clashes between subgroups in terms of levels of expertise (newbies vs experts vs old timers) as a side note, the phenomena of the "September that never ended" is educational
• Culture clashes with the outside world, this starts touching into the hacker ethis, etc. but also is illustrated in things like comments made to Babbage (along the line of, "if we put in the wrong questions, will it still give us the right answers?")
• The size of some the communities often has been much smaller than would have been imagined from the eventual impact. The original hacker communities in the 1980's did not number thousands, more like a few hundred, with a few dozen core experts. As such, there is often a certain provicialism that creeps in from time to time. The world is often not seen as being as big and diverse as it really is.
• The resemblance of some communities to a religion (Mac evangalism, for example. But there are many others) and the clashes this creates.
• The unsung hereos, people who invented the basic technology, and who never saw a decent return. (I still thing everyone should send the guy who invented the mouse a buck or two just to say "thank you!". This should be a community project of some sort)
• The Dead Media Project, found at deadmedia.org (and as noted earlier here on /.), is an interesting overview on the obsolescence of technology. the articles on the Information technology of ancient Athens are particularly worthwhile. (Seen here in the numeric listing as items 38.6 - 39.0)
• Also, Scientific American had a recent storythat mused about being an information technology worker in Mesopotamia, crunching the numbers that made the cities work.
• The generations of older technologies, including the older tube computers, relay based logic (which is wild in it's own right), and even music technologies such as used by Raymond Scott, (teacher of Robert Moog)

That MAY be true if the reason for finding and imaging planets were to find extreterrestrial life, but it's not. That would just be the cherry on the cake.

It is to get a better understanding of how our own planet came into existence, to learn more about how the universe is comprised, etc...you know, REAL science. Are you saying that finding other solar systems beyond our own isn't important?

Sedondly, to say that a magical mythical god created life, when science has proven that we evolved, would be a tragedy. To stop all learning because God and the bible provide all answers would be a blow to discovery, BIG TIME. The Bible is a Christian book, what about all the other religions? Religion is required by the fact that every human being longs for the answers to questions of, "Where did we come from?", "Where are we going?", and "Why am I here?". Religion (whichever one you have been TOLD to choose by your social surroundings) answers all these questions nicely, and for that purpose.

What would happen if we suddenly were to realize, that we are NOT alone in this vast universe. A universe that is so vast, that most humans can't comprehend the size and distances involved. What would happen to your religious beliefs? To find out that we are not only NOT alone, but that we are relatively young in the universal intelligence pool. What then?

We live an a non-descript planet in the middle of a non-descript solar system in the middle of billions of stars that make up our Milky Way galaxy, one of billions of galaxies...and you're going to tell me that we are it?!?! Shame on you for your egocentric ideals. To project the hint that you KNOW that we are alone. Are you the ALMIGHTY god?! I think not, and no, you DONT know if we are alone, you couldn't possibly know, so why do you say these things??? We are finding the building blocks of life in deep "empty" space! So to say, that in trillions of tries, where live giving particles are found in all areas of space, just happened to evolve on OUR planet for no apparent reason (sarcastic), would be silly. To say that in the 20 billions years (our guess as of today as to the age of our universe) that our universe has been evolving, that Earth was the only place that life arose would also be rather simple minded. By the numbers alone, as stated by the Drake equation, to say that we are alone goes against the odds.

Lastly, just because Mr. Alien hasn't walked up to your door and introduced himself/herself (PC) to you, DOES NOT constitute proof that we are not being visited on a very regular basis, now is it. To say that we will never be able to travel faster than the speed of light is also extremely narrow minded. We (well, other scientists actually) are now sending light at 3 times 186,000 miles a second, not to mention, we have STOPPED light, and then sent it on its way. To say that manipulating gravity wouldn't bypass the speed of light conundrum is also wrong. To warp gravity is to also warp time and space. We can concievably travel vast distances in a relative instant, all within the realm of reality, TODAY.

Anyway, my rant is over. I just was blown away by narrow mindedness of some of the responses here. To know that we know LITTLE of the universe we live in seems to be forgotten. To assume (yes, makes an ass out of u and me) that we are it, and that discovery is BORING, is, well, illogical. Thank you for your time...Bartles and James

That MAY be true if the reason for finding and imaging planets were to find extreterrestrial life, but it's not. That would just be the cherry on the cake. It is to get a better understanding of how our own planet came into existence, to learn more about how the universe is comprised, etc...you know, REAL science. Are you saying that finding other solar systems beyond our own isn't important? Sedondly, to say that a magical mythical god created life, when science has proven that we evolved, would be a tragedy. To stop all learning because God and the bible provide all answers would be a blow to discovery, BIG TIME. The Bible is a Christian book, what about all the other religions? Religion is required by the fact that every human being longs for the answers to questions of, "Where did we come from?", "Where are we going?", and "Why am I here?". Religion (whichever one you have been TOLD to choose by your social surroundings) answers all these questions nicely, and for that purpose. What would happen if we suddenly were to realize, that we are NOT alone in this vast universe. A universe that is so vast, that most humans can't comprehend the size and distances involved. What would happen to your religious beliefs? To find out that we are not only NOT alone, but that we are relatively young in the universal intelligence pool. What then? We live an a non-descript planet in the middle of a non-descript solar system in the middle of billions of stars that make up our Milky Way galaxy, one of billions of galaxies...and you're going to tell me that we are it?!?! Shame on you for your egocentric ideals. To project the hint that you KNOW that we are alone. Are you the ALMIGHTY god?! I think not, and no, you DONT know if we are alone, you couldn't possibly know, so why do you say these things??? We are finding the building blocks of life in deep "empty" space! So to say, that in trillions of tries, where live giving particles are found in all areas of space, just happened to evolve on OUR planet for no apparent reason (sarcastic), would be silly. To say that in the 20 billions years (our guess as of today as to the age of our universe) that our universe has been evolving, that Earth was the only place that life arose would also be rather simple minded. By the numbers alone, as stated by the Drake equation, to say that we are alone goes against the odds. Lastly, just because Mr. Alien hasn't walked up to your door and introduced himself/herself (PC) to you, DOES NOT constitute proof that we are not being visited on a very regular basis, now is it. To say that we will never be able to travel faster than the speed of light is also extremely narrow minded. We (well, other scientists actually) are now sending light at 3 times 186,000 miles a second, not to mention, we have STOPPED light, and then sent it on its way. To say that manipulating gravity wouldn't bypass the speed of light conundrum is also wrong. To warp gravity is to also warp time and space. We can concievably travel vast distances in a relative instant, all within the realm of reality, TODAY. Anyway, my rant is over. I just was blown away by narrow mindedness of some of the responses here. To know that we know LITTLE of the universe we live in seems to be forgotten. To assume (yes, makes an ass out of u and me) that we are it, and that discovery is BORING, is, well, illogical. Thank you for your time...Bartles and James

True, but from my understanding of the optical/electronic interface (which is far from complete) generating laser pulses (which is required for data transmission (LED's simply don't cut it) isn't the problem. It's going from photons to electrons that's the slow process.

If they can do this (p2e) with this technology then they are will on the way to using photons in the data bus, either between chips or on the chip. Unfortunately, from the paper, it appears that this can only be used to generate light, so they have only one half of the equation.

Also from the picture they published, the doped tracks glow, so it's not even a point source. There seems to be a lot more promise vertical-cavity serface emitting lasers.

The article is in the March '01 issue of Scientific American.

Well, the 75gxp has a density of 11 gigabits per square inch, while IBM has achieved 150 gigabits per square inch in the lab last summer (thanks to previous poster).

I think the AC might be right: CPRM

It doesn't work that way -- it has nothing to do with hard drive companies holding out. There are serious technical reasons why this trend can't continue until new, radically different data storage technologies pick up steam.

As data gets more and more tightly packed onto the platters, the energy that holds the magnetic spin on each bit (determining whether it's a 0 or a 1) gets less and less significant, and now it is so close to the ambient thermal energy that bits are randomly flipping and corrupting data.

So they're looking at a lot of different techniques, but instead of my trying to explain them, let me just show you the Scientific American article where this is all coming from.

--------------------------------

The Hubble Space Telescope reigns supreme for taking crisp photographs of faint objects, but ground-based optical interferometers can see, for the brightest stars, details 100 times finer than Hubble can.

I guess this means that hubble is better only at getting faint objects (which are, perhaps, nearly completely filtered out by our atmosphere, or at least enough to make interferometry ineffective. Meanwhile, bright objects gain enough resolution from these techniques to have surpassed what hubble has gained in super-atmospheric location.

Next step -- large-mirrored space-bound telescopes using interferometry techniques. If they don't cut NASA's budget too much. :)

-Puk

Instead there is a device called a Josephson Junction that can switch at terahertz frequencies.

Check out the Scientific American article.

IMO Josephson Junctions would make for a great CPU!

Besides, who says dolphins don't make tools - or at least toys? Using their built-in anatomical structures to manipulate the raw materials avalable to them, they can do things like this.

All they have so far are dolphins mimicking sounds- no evidence that the dolphins can understand it at all. Like parrots.

I guess you haven't seen this article about parrots. Check it out! It's about a parrot that can understand English and answer simple questions!

[me@localhost]$ prolog
| ?- god.
! Existence error in god/0

> Ignoring the creationsists for a minute, data from the genome map will require
> rethinking of some of our earlier conclusions, not least of all those about
> the basic functioning of genes - with only 30,000, synergy and emergent
> properties are will become radically more important, and related branches
> of mathematics will probably see new interest.
>
> Where's Buckminster Fuller when you need him?

As another post mentioned, it seems that reuse of code is another trick built into the workings of life that human programmers are only now catching up with. The discovery that the instructions for building a human are so much more economical than was at first naively assumed raises the possibility that cellular automata are not too far off the mark as a model for life itself, and that multicellularity is an object-oriented three-dimensional implementation.

Conway and Darwin were both right!

LaoK

But back to the immorality part. What I think the first poster was getting at is that this promising research might be stymied by certain political concerns. These concerns would protest the research based on the fact that the knowledge that lives might eventually be saved, may lower the emiotional costs of choosing abortion. This of course is true; stem cell research does have right wing opponants (at least in the US). I pretty much think their premis is a load of bunk (there's a word ya don't see now days). I would imagine that someone looking into abortion would have a lot of bigger fish to fry than, "Maybe some day my babies stem cells will grow up to cure cancer." Further more, I would respectfully submit that anyone that is having that kind of internal monologue is just trying to rationalize the choice they want to make for other more selfish (and practical) reasons. But it's never a choice I'll face, and for that I'm thankful.

But back to the immorality part. What I think the first poster was getting at is that this promising research might be stymied by certain political concerns. These concerns would protest the research based on the fact that the knowledge that lives might eventually be saved, may lower the emiotional costs of choosing abortion. This of course is true; stem cell research does have right wing opponants (at least in the US). I pretty much think their premis is a load of bunk (there's a word ya don't see now days). I would imagine that someone looking into abortion would have a lot of bigger fish to fry than, "Maybe some day my babies stem cells will grow up to cure cancer." Further more, I would respectfully submit that anyone that is having that kind of internal monologue is just trying to rationalize the choice they want to make for other more selfish (and practical) reasons. But it's never a choice I'll face, and for that I'm thankful.

There is at least one physicist who claims that time truly does not exist and is taken seriously. His view is that when you try to make the simplified wave equation for the universe you can do so if you factor out time. This has lead at least him to believe that time is something of an illusion caused by our consiousness slipping between what he calls "nows". Really all he's doing is claiming that the multiple worlds/universes theory for QM is fact and the undisputed underlying reality and the fact that you can factor out time and get a simpler model is evidence of this. It's pretty flakey, but he's taken fairly seriously, and puts his work up for peer review. Scientific American had an article on him a while back. Personally, I find his ideas a bit fruity, but it really all boils down to personal taste. I prefer decoherence, but technically it doesn't even matter. If a certain point of view is more illuminating in a certain aspect then that view is useful for investigating those aspects. The underlying reality is a veil that isn't readily pulled back, so anything that maps the another process onto time just becomes a question of semantics. In the end Neils Bohr would disagree with everyone (and he rarely lost an argument). He would concede one point; however, this whole jag is the domain of philosophy.

For a more serious look at what we might be doing WRONG in the area of genetic engineering, see Scientific American's review of Body Bazar. Among other things, it addresses your question: "Who are YOU to tell me what I can and can't do with my own genes?" -- apparently in US law, you DON'T own your own genes.

I guess I don't really believe that the kind of abuses that cloning could encourage ARE in fact occuring on any widespread basis. And there are much more important things to worry about.

-- Michael Chermside

groo

There has been extensive research on this:

Including, but not limited too:

1)This Article in Scientific American
2)This Reasearch Paper
3)This NASA report


Just FYI ;-)

Ultracold plazma and good old Fermi degeneracy. Both from scientific american.

Ultracold plazma and good old Fermi degeneracy. Both from scientific american.

This is a day late and a dollar short, but better than nothing.

According to the inventor's article on the Scientific American site, the FastShip really does plane. He calls it a "semi-planing" hull. This occurs becuase the FastShip has slight concavity to its hull in the stern. Supposedly, this lifts the stern and helps eliminate drag. Oh yes, I would imagine that any ship that can carry cargo would be able to handle passengers as well, but what passengers want to make that trip?
Zorn